November 2020
Featured Article
United Academics of the University of New Mexico: How Unions are Empowering Faculty
By: The Executive Council of United Academics of the University of New Mexico
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Many universities across the country have faculty unions or are in the process of unionizing their faculty. This movement has been growing during the last decade as tenure positions are phased out in favor of lecturers and adjuncts.These faculty unions are built through the tireless efforts of thousands of faculty members working together often against the wishes of their institution’s administration. As non-unionized faculty see the benefits that their colleagues at unionized institutions have won, there has been a rapid increase in unionization efforts by faculty and graduate students across our country. Unionized universities have won workplace stability, better benefits and salary upgrades, as well as regular cost of living increases. This is, for example, the case of our closest unionized university, Highlands University in Las Vegas, NM. There have been a significant number of success stories at R1 or R2 universities across the country, from California State University to Michigan State University and University of Michigan, to cite only a few. Thus, faculty unions are critical to the success of higher education institutions throughout the United States.
The purpose of unionization is to empower faculty, by giving them voice and transparency, and to keep democracy intact within the decision processes necessary to steer the university. Unionization is meant to protect the working conditions of the faculty, which has a tremendous impact in all university activities, including research and teaching, which, in turn, reflects in student satisfaction and success. The unionization effort has also provided a positive impact in the protection of diversity and inclusion, and to mitigate discrimination of protected groups.
Most faculty unions around the country are affiliated with international unions. This allows the local unions to share resources and communicate, to learn from the different successes and failures of their colleagues in other unions, to work towards changes in legislation that would benefit educators, and to seek legal advice and expertise. However, unions are not third parties joining the university. Faculty unions are organized by faculty employed by the institution through their grassroots efforts. Contrary to some popular misconceptions, unions are not formed by some outside group coming in to infiltrate higher ed institutions. Our union, United Academics of the University of New Mexico, is affiliated with American Federation of Teachers (AFT), a powerful national union. With AFT’s resources and support, our union has established our own priorities, such as working towards providing a fair and equitable workplace and learning environment, providing mechanisms to address the best possible compensation and benefits, protecting academic freedom, as well as fostering diversity and the protection of vulnerable populations. Moreover, faculty are aware that a successful university should make every effort to recruit and retain talented faculty. These are our faculty union’s main objectives, and AFT has supported these goals fully.
One major advantage to UA-UNM being affiliated with AFT is that we are part of a much larger national union, which has provided us with the much needed support during our transition from grassroots efforts to organizing our legally recognized union with a contract. AFT has also been a critical support in legislative efforts at the state level. We teamed up with faculty unions across the state. As AFT also represents K-12 institutions throughout the U.S., we all came together to fight for raises and cost of living increases for educators across the board. Unfortunately, after COVID-19 took hold in our state, NM Legislators came together for a special session, at which time our cost of living increase was withdrawn to accommodate the budget deficits due to the pandemic. We are already working with AFT and our colleagues across the state to get ready for the legislative session coming up this spring. We will again work together in solidarity with educators across the state with the support of AFT to regain that much needed cost of living wage increase.
After UA-UNM faced many obstacles presented by our institution's administration, we voted by an overwhelming majority to legally establish ourselves as a faculty union on October 17, 2019. UA-UNM Faculty Member-Leaders immediately hit the ground running by creating committees to address the different activities to establish our union. The first committees we organized ourselves into were a Research and Bargaining Committee to negotiate our first contract with UNM administration, a Communications Committee to keep in contact with the membership, an Events Committee to organize events and raise awareness of our union, and an Executive Council representing the diverse faculty of UNM to guide the efforts of our union. All of our constituents are faculty members that volunteer for multiple tasks. Since then, UA-UNM has put many articles on the bargaining table regarding faculty voice and rights, benefits, compensation and salaries, leaves, professional development, promotion and tenure, performance review, recruitment and retention of minorities and women, sexual misconduct, safe working conditions and many others. In order to design our ideal contract, UA-UNM groups conducted interviews and surveys among all faculty and studied the faculty handbook and current regulations of the university. We have researched many existing contracts and regulations of universities across the country, scholarly works, and other sources for nearly a year, which has produced substantial results. The aim of UA-UNM is to update the existing regulations and to introduce novel ideas to modernize the university’s concepts of healthy working conditions, Including improved health insurance and benefits and strong institutional protections of minority people and women, which will in turn strengthen the reputation of our university.
UA-UNM has played a critical role in the response to the COVID-19 Pandemic on campus, with a memorandum of understanding presented to faculty jointly by UA-UNM and the administration. The MOU includes the option of pausing the tenure clock during the pandemic, the option to attend meetings virtually, and the option to suspend student evaluations for the present year. The agreement also outlines safety measures for protecting faculty, staff, and students against COVID-19.
The University of New Mexico belongs to its students, staff, and faculty, as well as to the community in general that contributes with their taxes to support the university. We work hard for everyone to feel that they belong here, and our union supports us in doing this important work.